Guidance for Living With Purpose and Messages From Spirit

THANKSGIVING 2013 – A Little History
What’s in a Holiday?: Thanksgiving’s Pagan Roots

In my previous posts on the origins of our contemporary holidays, we learn how many of them have roots in Paganism. The holiday of Thanksgiving is hardly different and it was certainly not the first feast celebrating the harvest.

In school, we are taught that in the year 1621 the Pilgrims established Thanksgiving to share their abundant harvest with the local Wampanoag tribe (“People of the Dawn”) who were a civilization of hunters, farmers and fisherman. Although the Pilgrims and Wampanoagans celebrated the first actual Thanksgiving itself, the tribe had its’ own feast day in which they gave thanks for their abundant crops as they honored Kiehtan, the Creator. Future Pagan immigrants brought their harvest festivals to America as well.

By the time Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a National holiday in 1861, other Europeans had also settled in America and brought with them their own traditions, some Pagan. Harvest festivals were celebrated by European Romans at Cerelia by giving thanks to Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Pagans celebrated Lughnasadh and Mabon, which as Wiccans we know, is also the First and Second Harvests of the year. The Greeks honored Demeter during the Thesmohoria and the New Englanders’ Pagan ancestors celebrated Harvest Home (the first reaping of crops in August). This was a time for gratitude and reflection followed by singing and dancing, after which everyone enjoyed a wonderful feast.

A special wish for everyone and their families and a very Happy and healthy Thanksgiving! Blessed Be!

Author – Lady Blogger: Morganna

A MESSAGE FROM SPIRITBLOGGERHappy Thanks and Giving! There is always so much abundance that continues to surround us throughout the year. Take a moment to appreciate all that you are, all that you have, all whom you know, and everything that surrounds you. Give thanks in advance for your life that is and will be. Celebrate your life and make every moment count. Wishing you a Bright and Festive Thanksgiving this year – full of Connection, Joy, Love, Smiles, and Warmth. Remember, enjoy the moment by being spiritually present in each moment and give yourself permission and the freedom to create your experience and enjoy it. Many Blessings to You All. Thanks for all your kind words, support, and great comments!
Much Love & Light,
Angela (aka – The Spiritblogger)

A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM SPIRITBLOGGER
November is a great month for self-reflection, following Samhain, the Pagan New Year’s Eve, which often serves as a perfect time to set goals for the new year. When I think of November, I think of opportunities for both Thanks and Giving, which calls up thoughts and feelings about conscious gratitude, forgiveness, and release. By conscious I mean an active thought and present choice to think about these things and do.

To feel grateful today, we can shift our focus, and decide to appreciate things we already have and people in our lives. We can think about the life situations we choose to put ourselves in and people we surround ourselves with, review and acknowledge our work and spiritual contributions to the world, and build upon our generosity with family and friends. We can be thankful and thus continue to manifest personal change and abundance for our highest purpose and continued happiness. I read recently, to help manifest gratitude and create a better and more meaningful life for ourselves, we should playfully imagine once a day that we’re already there and frequently speak in gratitude “as if” we’ve already arrived. The mere thought of change can be a great first step to making it real by your actions.

At times during our internal audit and inventory process, we may realize we have become emotionally stuck due to harboring anger, resentment, negativity, guilt, misgivings, sadness, and fear towards others. Then, in order to move forward, it becomes necessary to let it go, release, and possibly forgive. Facing these blocks head on allows us the opportunity to become a stronger person.

Other times, it’s learning to forgive ourselves for all of the things we should have, could have, and didn’t say or do, and instead focus upon what we can say and do, today. Removing these blocks can be a long and pain staking process or we can decide to simply let go, and focus on letting go to achieve our freedom of mind, and preserve our spirit, and heart. Remember, forgiveness isn’t meant to change the past; it’s an active opportunity to release our burdens and a choice we can make to help foster “alightness of being” in our present, and to ensure a happy future.

Changing who we are isn’t an easy process, but it’s important to trust ourselves. It is said life will never give us more than we are capable of handling, with relentless opportunities to empower our spiritual self. So, if we are interested in evolving, growing, and expanding spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, it’s keen to remember life isn’t about finding ourselves, but instead about creating and recreating ourselves continuously over time. I believe we are all capable of great internal and external change. Mahatma Gandhi said it best: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world”. To me, this means it’s important to develop self-awareness, embody positive change, and cultivate gracious qualities which allow you to act and live with gratitude and a forgiving nature.

In my search for advice on gratitude, I came across a great truth-telling post called Forgiveness and Gratitude by Pixie Allan I hope you find inspiring. She reminds us to be thankful and discusses having an attitude of gratitude. I also wanted to share with you an excerpt I found interesting from an article called The Occult Meaning of Thanksgiving.

I wish Bright Blessings for your November introspection, manifesting your dreams, and living your best life for the new year!

Forgiveness and Gratitude
“You have to really want to let go to be able to fully forgive your past. People say they have ‘Let Go’ but you can probably bet your bottom dollar that 85% have not ‘Let Go’. The percentage is high, but it’s true to its number. Forgiveness may come in many colors but you can’t fake this emotion, because your heart can’t fake gratitude, it can’t fake forgiveness, it has to be 100% ready to release whatever it was, to stand in your own moment and say, ‘hey you know what, this was a crappy place I was in and I acted like a tool, can we forgive and rebuild’. It can’t be one-sided and it can’t be one person doing all the repair work.

With any relationship/friendship breakdown it always takes two people to have the meltdown and most of the time it’s a lack of understanding, throw in the ego and we are dancing round that camp fire burning our asses on the cinders! You know I’m right! In all honesty, forgiveness is hard, you really have to want it, but on the flip side of that, surely you want to release the pain and anger that it sat somewhere deep inside of you? Be grateful for the lessons you learned and take those lessons with you into the future ensuring that you don’t make the same mistake the next time, that’s truly how we know if we have learned all lesson…… it stops showing up!

To truly Let Go, be thankful, and move forward. You deserve the best life possible and by holding on to negativity you are not allowing all those yummy goodies to come to you because, like I always say, like attracts like, if you’re putting out there that, ‘I always meet asshats’ then the universe will give you an abundance of asshats! If you affirm ‘ I attract kind caring people who love me for who I am’ then that’s what the universe will give you. Every thought is an affirmation; can you imagine how many negative affirmations you have in your head in one day? Not just the thoughts about yourself but other people too…. that’s not good is it? So, change.

Forgiveness is key, whether you are forgiving yourself or whether you are forgiving others, release the negativity around the situation, send them love and light and move on with a smile on your face and love in your heart, you don’t have to attach to the drama if you choose not to, your life is for living not for living in the past so, release it all, art it out, journal it out, scream at the top of your lungs, or whatever works for you, but let it go and feel the love. Honestly, it’s the best way to move forward.

You can’t control people or how their minds work, but you can control yourself. Should they wish not to make you part of their future know it’s OK, you learnt all you could from the friendship/relationship, the universe will replace that with something bigger and better… if you let it, of course.”

“Is there any occult or esoteric meaning in the American holiday of Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is a harvest festival to give thanks for the past year. During the farming era of the past, scarcity and need were always lurking around the corner. When there was a bountiful harvest it was time for celebration.

Thanksgiving is associated with the cornucopia, symbolizing food, abundance, and prosperity. The cornucopia of plenty has its origin in ancient mythology. The Roman god Fortuna, the goddess of luck and fortune, was often depicted carrying a cornucopia and it became linked with her. Lady Fortune represented how life was subject to the whim of chance, good or ill. In ancient Roman times Fortuna was sought by many seeking good fortune and to avoid bad luck. Since then this goddess has a modern name…Lady Luck.

Here is the possible occult meaning of Thanksgiving. We give thanks for our abundance, with the unspoken hope of avoiding scarcity in the year ahead. Giving thanks is not just an act of appreciation for what has past, but hope for the future as well. Unknowingly, with thanksgiving we are practicing the law of attraction.

The Law of Attraction suggests what we think will become manifest in our lives. This concept is one of the cornerstones of occult thought. Ritual, visualization, ceremony (dinner festivals) are all tools to the same end, to affect the future. By giving thanks for what we have with confidence for better days ahead, we may cause this to occur. The opposite is true, if we bemoan the present with grim expectations for the future, then that will likely be our fate as well.

I nominate Fortuna as the unspoken patron deity of Thanksgiving. Life is a roll of the dice and can be arbitrary and unfair. If we are fortunate enough to have a happy thanksgiving holiday, we should really be grateful. There are many who will not enjoy a feast this year, or who eat alone. We live in hard times now. Our state of mind can make the difference. We can change our circumstances if give thanks not only for the present, but give thanks for the future as well. Giving thanks for that which has yet to happen will make it manifest.”